Relief

It's finally overcast.

Most of the East Coast has been like living in an oven.  The only redemption has been water, air conditioners and hibernating. I grew up in Michigan; 108 is just odd.

I can't imagine living here without the salvation of AC.  I don't know how people lived in the South pre-cooling.  But I understand Southern literature now. Intense heat seems to produce intense literature.  

So, I've been living in a short story without all the great writing, just wandering, page to page, over the hot, paling landscapes.  I just checked out the stats and 23 of the 31 days in July were over 90, including a two week stint that soared as high as 108.  Now I understand why I have been so uncomfortable.  And hibernating.

The stats say that last summer was hotter, but it wasn't. No way!  I'm wondering, as I look out my window at the pale grey clouds, if there is a difference in cloud cover in the two summers.  Or maybe it was wind, or maybe it rained and didn't feel as hot for as long.

This summer has seemed cruel.  As if the sky itself became a desert.  Waterless, cloudless, dull, angry. Everyday, someone forgot to order moisture.  The heat kept building.  Heat upon heat, day upon day.

Baltimore is a city of brick and concrete.  By 3:00 on the afternoon of July 22, the temperature at the Inner Harbor's Science Center was 108!!  And that is by the water....

In the last couple days, we have had thunderclouds.  I've missed them, those grand buildings of moisture.  Last night, at 3 in the morning,  a violent storm beat the begeebeeze out of our neighborhood.  It was a welcome sound - all the tumult, the lightening exposing everything, the thunder clapping so loud one's bones rattle.

Today, with the massive cover of clouds protecting us from the sun's glare, I am grateful for such simple things as clouds and rain and relief.